# Azure Blob Storage

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/storage/azure-blob/

Microsoft's object storage, priced per region — every figure here is East US Hot LRS from the public retail price feed.

## Who it suits

Workloads already on Azure, where keeping storage in the same region as the compute avoids the bandwidth charge that dominates an object storage bill.

Consider something else if Egress is charged beyond the first 100 GB a month, where R2, Wasabi and Tigris charge nothing — and Azure's rates vary by region and redundancy, so a quoted figure only holds for the combination it was read for.

## iScore

64 / 100 (80% interval 59–70), rank 9 of 9 in storage — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Read this score with care:
- Capabilities is thin: 0 of 1 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (94–100). Read the interval, not the point.
- Trust and compliance is thin: 4 of 10 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (63–84). Read the interval, not the point.
- Documented but not scored, because the page states it as text with no comparable number or a yes/limited/no (a one-time, usage-based or other-vendor price, or a per-site choice): free_allowance, operations_price, uptime_sla. Read them on the provider page; the score neither rewards nor penalises what it could not compare.

Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every storage peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/storage/azure-blob/alternatives/

- Price: 52 (43–61), weight 53%, 5 of 8 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: free_allowance, free_card_required, operations_price
- Capacity and limits: 54 (48–61), weight 8%, 1 of 1 criteria scored
- Capabilities: 100 (94–100), weight 6%, 0 of 1 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: s3_compatible
- Trust and compliance: 74 (63–84), weight 23%, 4 of 10 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs, customer_managed_keys, encryption_at_rest, gdpr_data_residency, support_included, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 95 (95–95), weight 11%, 4 of 4 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: No ([source](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/), read 2026-09-13)
- Kind of free offer: Free credit ([source](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/), read 2026-09-13)
- What the free plan includes: $200 of Azure credit for 30 days on a new account. Azure separately lists services that are always free and services free for 12 months to new customers, which is an account-wide programme rather than a Blob Storage allowance. ([source](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-services/), read 2026-09-13)
- When the free offer ends: 30 days. ([source](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/), read 2026-09-13)
- Pricing model: Per region, per redundancy and per access tier, with storage, operations and egress metered separately; no plans and no bundles. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?%24filter=serviceName+eq+%27Storage%27+and+armRegionName+eq+%27eastus%27+and+skuName+eq+%27Hot+LRS%27+and+productName+eq+%27Blob+Storage%27), read 2026-09-13)
- Egress over allowance: First 100 GB a month free, then $0.087 per GB over Microsoft's global egress meter, falling to $0.083 above 10 TB. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?%24filter=serviceName+eq+%27Bandwidth%27+and+armRegionName+eq+%27eastus%27+and+meterName+eq+%27Standard+Data+Transfer+Out%27), read 2026-09-13)

### Limits

- Storage (entry plan): None. Azure Blob has no plans and no free storage band: the Hot LRS meter is charged from the first GB. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?%24filter=serviceName+eq+%27Storage%27+and+armRegionName+eq+%27eastus%27+and+skuName+eq+%27Hot+LRS%27+and+productName+eq+%27Blob+Storage%27), read 2026-09-13)

### Infrastructure

- Uptime SLA: Not published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer. ([source](https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/docs/view/Service-Level-Agreements-SLA-for-Online-Services), read 2026-09-15)

### Storage

- Storage price: $0.0208 per GB-month for Hot LRS in East US, falling to $0.019968 above 50 TB and $0.019136 above 500 TB. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?%24filter=serviceName+eq+%27Storage%27+and+armRegionName+eq+%27eastus%27+and+skuName+eq+%27Hot+LRS%27+and+productName+eq+%27Blob+Storage%27), read 2026-09-13)
- Operations price: $0.05 per 10,000 write operations and $0.004 per 10,000 reads on Hot LRS in East US. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?%24filter=serviceName+eq+%27Storage%27+and+armRegionName+eq+%27eastus%27+and+skuName+eq+%27Hot+LRS%27+and+productName+eq+%27Blob+Storage%27), read 2026-09-13)
- Minimum storage duration: None on Hot. Cool carries a 30-day minimum, Cold 90 days and Archive 180 days — the longest early-deletion window of any provider here, and three times S3's 90-day Glacier figure. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/access-tiers-overview), read 2026-09-07)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/), read 2026-09-12)
- ISO 27001: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/), read 2026-09-12)
- HIPAA: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/), read 2026-09-12)
- PCI DSS: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/), read 2026-09-12)

## Compared with

- [Azure Blob Storage vs Amazon S3](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-s3-vs-azure-blob/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Cloudflare R2](https://inetgeek.com/compare/cloudflare-r2-vs-azure-blob/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Wasabi](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-wasabi/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Backblaze B2](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-backblaze-b2/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Bunny Storage](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-bunny-storage/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs IDrive e2](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-idrive-e2/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Storj](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-storj/)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Tigris](https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-blob-vs-tigris/)